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"Top Dog"
If I could, I would take your grief, dig it up
out of the horseradish field and grate it into something red and hot
to sauce the shellfish. I would take the lock of your hair you put in the locket
and carry it in my hand, I would make the light strike everything
the way it hit the Bay Bridge, turning the ironwork at sunset into waffles.
If I could, I would blow your socks off, they would travel far, always
in pairs, past the dead men running, past the cranes standing in snow,
beyond the roads we rode, so small in our little car it was like riding
in a miner's helmet. If I could I would make everyone vote and call
their public servants to say, "No one was meant for this."
I would go back to the afternoon we made love in the tall grass
under the full sun not far from the ravine
where the old owner had thrown hundreds of mink cages.
I would memorize gateways to the afterworld, the electric third rail,
the blond braid our girl has hanging down her back,
the black guppy we killed at our friends when we pulled the bubbler
and the fish floated to the top, one eye up at the ceiling, the other
at the blue gravel on the bottom of the tank.
I would beg an audience with Sister Lucia, the last living of the children
visited by Our Lady of Fatima, I would ask her about the weight of secrets,
if they let her sleep or if she woke at night with a body on her body,
if the body said, "Let's play top dog, first I'll lie on you, then you lie on me."
I would ask how she lived with revelation, the normal state of affairs
amplified beyond God, bumped up to the Virgin Mother,
who no doubt knew a few things, passed them on, quietly,
and I would ask Lucia how she lived with knowing,
how she could keep it under her hat, under wraps, button up, zip her lip,
play it close to the vest, never telling, never
using truth as a weapon.
—Barbara Ras
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